Medicinal or health baths often contain extracts from herbs as medicinally effective additives which are added to the water in a bathtub or in a basin, for example in the form of liquid herb extracts. A precise dosing is often difficult. Moreover, the liquid herb extracts offered on the market at the present contain additional substances, such as emulsifiers, additional binders or preservatives. Such additives are not desirable in many instances.
For this reason, herb packages have previously been proposed which contain herbs in dry form in a water-permeable pouch. Additives, especially preservatives, are basically unnecessary with these herb packages. To prepare a medicinal or health bath with this type of package, one or more pouches--depending upon the desired concentration of herb extracts in this bath--are placed into the water. The herbs impart their active substances into the water through the water-permeable surface of the package, whereby the herbs remain within the pouch, which can later be removed from the bath without difficulty. This also avoids the danger of loose softened herbs plugging up the drain pipe from the bath or basin.
In order to facilitate locating a herb package in the bath, it would be advantageous to produce a herb package which floats on the surface of the water. A floating package would further ensure that upon draining the bath, the package itself would not block the drain. However, known floating herb packages are relatively expensive, particularly so whenever additional floating or buoyancy bodies or elements are used.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to develop a herb package of the type described above that it is capable of floating even without having additional floating or buoyancy bodies or elements. A further object is to provide a floating herb package which when in use ensures as thorough mixing as possible of the water with the herbs present in the herb package or with the medicinally effective substances imparted by the herbs.
To attain these and other objects, a perforated herb package according to the invention is designed so that the synthetic foil around each perforation forms a projection extending beyond one said surface of the synthetic foil. Furthermore, the projections defining a portion of the perforations protrude from the outside surface of the pouch, and the projections defining the remainder of perforations protrude inwardly from the inside surface of the pouch.
The perforations in the synthetic foil constituting the pouch, in the case of the herb package according to the invention, have such a small diameter that the herbs contained in the package are not capable of passing through the perforations to the outside.
In order to form the perforations and the surrounding projections, the synthetic foil is pierced with fine perforating needles from both sides either before the production of the pouch or after its production so as to form not only perforations, but also the projections because of lasting deformation of the surrounding material, into truncated, coneshaped sections. Because of their surrounding projections, the perforations, owing to the inherent elasticity of the synthetic material used, have the tendency to open or close somewhat when differential pressures exist on opposite sides of the foil. Thus, the perforations in the outwardly extending protrusions widen when the package sides are pressed together, that is to say in the case of an excess pressure, while the perforations in the inwardly extending projections close up. On the contrary, in the case of an enlargement of the inside space of the herb package, for example, by extending this package, the perforations defined by the inwardly protruding projections are somewhat enlarged while the other perforations close up. As a result of this valve-action, there results a very homogenous water flow through the inside space of the herb package. Moreover, as a result of the design of the herb package, a certain residual quantity of air always remains in the inside space of the herb package, so that said package is capable of floating even without the use of additional floating or buoyancy bodies.
For the production of the herb package, polypropylene foil is particularly suitable.